Islamic intolerance is escalating unchecked across Pakistan as Islamic
fundamentalism emanating from mosques and madrassas cultivates hatred which is
then fuelled by the impunity the persecutors enjoy.
As chaos and
lawlessness escalate, religious intolerance and hatred are unleashed without
restraint, and the situation for Christians deteriorates.
The following
reports represent the tip of the iceberg. All are recent.
(Credit to
Compass Direct News for their
phenomenal reporting on the plight of Pakistan's minority
Christians.)
NORTH WEST FRONTIER
PROVINCE (NWFP).
On 14 June,
Samuel
John, a Christian psychology professor at the University of Peshawar, was
savagely bashed outside his home by a group
of five students for refusing to convert to Islam. When his wife rushed to his
aid, she too was beaten. Both required hospitalisation, with the professor in a
critical condition. The police refuse to register a First Information Report
(FIR), and John continues to be threatened with death unless he
converts to Islam or leaves the
University.
PUNJAB PROVINCE.
Sunil Masih,
Shazia Masih and Nasir Naeem, three
Christian 8th grade students in Danna village, southern Punjab, have long
faced pressure from teachers to convert to Islam. On 16 June, after their
parents complained, the principal backed his staff, agreeing that the students
should
convert to Islam or leave the
school. When the police refused to help, the three Christian families fled the
area.
On 19 June,
Rehmat Masih (85), a Christian of Faisalabad
district,
was arrested and jailed
after a hard-line Muslim named Muhammad Sajjid Hameed filed a
false blasphemy charge against him. Hameed
and Masih had both made application for the same parcel of land.
Christian
policeman Jamshed Masih was recently
transferred to the predominantly Muslim Mustafa Colony in Jhelum, south
of Islamabad. However, local Muslims unwilling to have the Christian family
living amongst them, immediately began conspiring against them.
On 21
June, a mob led by local Muslim religious leader Maulana Mahfooz Khan descended
on the family's home after Masih had left for work. Sensing trouble brewing,
Masih's wife, Razia, had already phoned her husband and asked him to come home
urgently. Khan accused the eldest son (11) of blasphemy, drawing a crowd. As
Razia pleaded for mercy someone in the crowd hit her on the head with a hard
object, causing her to bleed and her children to cry. The agitated crowd began
baying for blood, and by the time Jamshed Masih got home, his wife and four
children lay murdered --
massacred.
Masih tried to file a complaint, but the Station House Officer refused to
register a FIR.
On 1 July
Rev. Rashid Emmanuel (32) and Sajid Emmanuel (30), leaders of United Ministries Pakistan, were falsely accused of blasphemy. They were supposed to have written a
blasphemous document and signed their names to it (a highly unlikely scenario in
any case, except for someone with a death wish).
Over 10 and 11 July many
hundreds of enraged Muslims marched through the predominantly Christian colony
of Dawood Nagar. Spewing abuse and obscenities, they called for the immediate
death of the two Christian brothers. According to Compass Direct News, while
Islamic extremists led the protests, most participants appeared to be teenagers
who pelted the main gate of the Waris Pura Catholic Church with stones, bricks
and shards of glass and pounded the gate with bamboo clubs.
It was widely
expected that the brothers would soon be exonerated as handwriting experts had
notified police that the signatures on the papers denigrating Muhammad did not
match those of the accused.
On 19 July 2010, the brothers were
shot dead outside the Faisalabad courthouse
by five masked men. The bodied of the slain brothers showed signs of torture.
The killings have caused religious tensions in Faisalabad to soar.
In Farooqabad
in eastern Punjab, on the night of 21 July,
three Muslim co-workers of a Christian man allegedly raped
his 16-year-old daughter at gunpoint. Then, on 29 July, after Masih
complained to police, two other Muslims who work for his employer, kidnapped him
and took him to the employer's farmhouse where they allegedly shackled and
tortured Masih, leaving him in critical
condition.
In
Rawalpindi district,
students from the local Jamia Islamia Madrassa have been harassing Christians in
the villages around Gujar Khan. According to a local pastor, they routinely
beat Christian children and throw
stones at the church. 'They openly announce that "the Christians are our
enemies, we should not talk to them, eat with them or do business with them".'
(NOTE: the Qur'an repeatedly commands Muslims to maintain enmity towards and
separation from Christians.)
On 22 July, a
12-yr-old girl from a local Christian family
was gang-raped by 7 or 8 madrassa
students. A teacher who witnessed the incident overheard one of the
16-strong student-mob saying:
'We will teach
these Christians a lesson they will never forget'.
When the
girl's distraught parents subsequently went to the police station to file a
complaint, the officer in charge refused to register it, yielding to local
Muslim pressure. According to the
Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement
(CLAAS), 'Such vicious incidents are not being stopped by the government,
and day by day the rate of rapes of Christian girls is escalating instead of
plunging.' (As would be expected when rape is rewarded with
impunity.)
SINDH PROVINCE.
On 13 July 2010, Dr. Abdul Jabbar
Meammon, his driver, another Muslim doctor and two other men, beat,
tortured and gang-raped Christian trainee nurse Magdalene Ashraf at
the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center, Karachi, Sind Province. In an effort to
cover up their crime, the three Muslim men then
attempted to kill Magdalene by throwing her
out of a window on the hospital's 4th floor. While Magdalene survived the
attack, she is a critical condition with serious head and shoulder
injuries.
Magdlene told the Christian Lawyers' Foundation (CLF) that a
nurse named Sajjad Fatima had set her up, sending her to Dr Meammon's room on
false pretenses. When Magdalene entered Dr Meammon's office, he grabbed her.
“When I resisted and tried to escape, nurse Fatima slapped both my cheeks and
pushed me into Dr. Jabbar,” Ashraf said. “I cried out but no one arrived there
to rescue me. They not only gang-raped me, they also tortured me physically and
ruthlessly beat me.”
Dr Jabbar Meammon, a known sexual predator, has been
charged with attempted murder. No-one has been charged with rape or assault.
Meanwhile, as Dr Meammon and his legal team work on his contrary story (where he
the victim!), Ashraf's family is receiving threats.
On 15 July, Pastor Aaron
John, Rohail Bhatti, Salman John, Abid Gill and Shamin Mall were shot
dead -- massacred -- and
six others were wounded when a dozen masked men opened fire on them as they
exited their church property in Sukkur, Sindh Province.
Students from a
local madrassa (Qur'anic school) have been threatening the church since 2008,
and according to reports, while the gunmen had young physiques like those of
students, their manner of attack indicated they were trained
militants.
The church members had been meeting to discuss security in the
light of a threatening letter the church had received in May from Islamic
extremist group Sip-e-Sahaba warning the Christians to leave the area because
they were not welcome and were polluting the land.
The police and
ambulance took 45 minutes to arrive.
A church member told Compass Direct
News that, not only had the police refused to register a FIR in relation to the
threats, they have also yielded to Muslim pressure and refused to register a FIR
in relation to the Sukkur massacre.
FLOODS
Pakistan's
devastating floods are the result of unprecedented monsoonal rains
AND bad governance, for
Pakistan has one of
the highest rates of deforestation in the world.
Pakistan today has
less than 5 percent forest cover. (Five percent is the official government
figure, but the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says
forests only amount to about 2.5 percent of the country's total
area.)
The floods have wiped out millions of homes
AND,
accord to
TIME magazine, some 17 million acres of agricultural land have been
submerged, and more than 100,000 animals have perished.
A humanitarian crisis
of monumental proportions is unfolding.
Further to this,
Bishop
Humphrey Peters of Peshawar warns that aid is unlikely to reach marginalised
minority Christians.
Meanwhile, the people's anger, hunger and
desperation, combined with the government's virtual collapse in credibility, and
the Army's diversion into rescue and relief, provides the al-Qaeda-Taliban with
a phenomenal window of opportunity.
As TIME
magazine notes, it will be difficult -- suicidal in fact -- for the
government to crack down on Islamic fundamentalist and militant groups -- like
the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, an Islamic "charity" with alleged links to the
banned Lashkar-e-Taiba -- when these groups are extending aid and assistance to
the displaced and are receiving donations from the "urban middle class of
Punjab, who are turning increasingly to religious conservatism".
Is the battle for Pakistan
essentially already over?
In a 4 Aug 2010 column for Dawn
(Pakistan), Rafia Zakaria (a US-based attorney who teaches constitutional
history and political philosophy) writes that while the Pakistani army might be
having some military successes against the Pakistani Taliban, the Taliban's
"social project of producing a radicalised Pakistan attracted to literal and
intolerant interpretations of faith is flourishing. Examples of such societal
radicalisation abound, a notable one being the lack of public outcry against the
rampant persecution of minorities who do not fit into the idealised mould of the
Sunni Muslim Pakistani citizen."
See:
Everyday
intolerance
By Rafia Zakaria, for Dawn, Wednesday, 04 Aug 2010
In
lamenting the Islamisation of Pakistan, Zakaria notes not only the persecution
of religious minorities -- Christians, Ahmadis and Hindus -- but also the
banning of Facebook (deemed blasphemous, the ban was supported by 70% of
Pakistanis), and the banning of Teray Bin Laden, a comedy film that pokes fun at
Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and features Pakistani pop star Ali Zafar. "The
affinity for bans suggests the increasing prevalence of a worldview that wants
to eliminate perspectives that are repugnant, rather than develop intellectual
arguments against them."
Zakaria deplores the Islamisation of college
campuses, noting that some have banned "Western dress", and decries the rise of
Islamic vigilantism.
Zakaria expresses a widely held fear that, "while
the Pakistani military may be winning the territorial conflict, the war for the
Pakistani psyche may already have been lost."
This post is an
extended version of
Religious Liberty
Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 069 | Wed 18 Aug 2010, "PAKISTAN: SITUATION
CRITICAL".
--
Posted By E.N. Kendal. Religious Liberty Monitoring to
Religious
Liberty Monitoring at 8/18/2010 04:36:00 PM